'Never dreamt of becoming Microsoft CEO'

Having spent his formative years in India where most youngsters are passionate about cricket, it was not in the “wildest dreams” of Satya Nadella to become CEO of Microsoft one day.

“Having grown up in India, the idea that I would have the opportunity to talk to all of you as CEO of Microsoft was beyond my wildest dreams. Admittedly, my interests at that time were a bit more focussed on cricket than on technology,” he said.

Nadella addressed participants via video who had gathered at the two-day “Azure Conference” organised by Microsoft India in Bangalore that began on Thursday.

He said that technological advancements over the past few years have thrown up many opportunities for Indian developers. “We are at a pivotal time in our industry – living in and developing for a mobile first, cloud first world. Now more than ever, organizations require modern applications that deliver cloud-scale, while integrating with existing systems through hybrid cloud capabilities. I believe the opportunities ahead for India with the Azure cloud platform are tremendous,” he said.

Nadella said that “Azure” is a powerful platform for the entire Indian ecosystem of IT professionals, developers and startups to bring their applications to market worldwide. It helps Indian customers leapfrog to the cloud, and accrue significant cost savings, he added. Microsoft India said  that a significant portion of its growth in India in the last 12 months has come from its cloud businesses. “Microsoft is powering the cloud transition in India with Windows Azure and a set of comprehensive offerings across private, hybrid and public clouds,” Chairman, Microsoft India, Bhaskar Pramanikat said.

“We are adding over 2000 commercial cloud customers every month in India and these are customers across all industry sectors – banking, manufacturing, healthcare and media, and across large, mid-sized and small companies,” Bhaskar added.
 “Our investments in improving the readiness of our partners and developers is enabling faster cloud adoption. We are in a mobile-first, cloud-first world and cloud is becoming an integral part of the IT infrastructure in Indian enterprises today,” Managing Director, Microsoft India, Karan Bajwa said.

A study conducted by Zinnov Consulting released at the event said that hybrid cloud was the way forward for large enterprises.